Goals or Commitments? Looking ahead to 2019

I’ve been in this game for over half a decade, the January push can be overwhelming on a lot of people. They tend to put too much pressure on themselves. Having a new year goal is a great motivator if you are a competitive athlete, but if you are training to feel good, be happy in your own skin and build confidence a goal is hard to pinpoint.

It’s always been a bit strange to me that people wait until January to make a positive change to their health. Come January every gym is slammed with people that have this overwhelming external pressure to train as hard as possible in order to change their body as quick as possible - no matter the long term health costs. Unfortunately long term fitness and health goals can’t be reached stressing your body for 6 weeks in some fad challenge. If you have been living unhealthy lifestyle for 5 years, 6 weeks isn’t going to fix the problem.

What is going to fix the problem is having a coach work with you consistently throughout the year, blending ‘what you need to do’ with ‘what you want to do’. We put this into a group based setting to build a community and offer an affordable option as the cost is being split between the class for the coach.

Setting Goals

I’ve got some very competitive athletes as clients, they have competitions that they are focused on this year. In a consultation they turn round and say “I want to go to XY comp, that my goal”. It’s my job as their coach to pick apart that goal and find the prerequisites needed in order to compete at that level. Do they need a 100kg squat clean, a 7:15 2K rowing time or high level gymnastics? I then take those small targets and build out a training plan towards the overarching goal. A good example is masters athlete Dean, he has ambitions to represent MVMT42 again at the European Masters Throwdown. Instead of just saying “I want to be better” we put small targets in place for 2019, most of which he has achieved through a great training program and hard work. Everything has been leading to peaking for this competition as that’s his goal.

So what if you are not a competitive athlete?

You’re still an athlete, you have a coach, you follow a program that is suited to you and you continually step forward. But having a non quantifiable goal like “be healthier “ or “be fitter” is very hard to achieve, because measuring it is almost impossible and has so many variables.

So in 2019, have an intention, a promise to yourself to turn up to class 2x a week, or start our Barbell Class, or jump into the Sussex Games. Use the expertise of the team here at MVMT42 to guide you towards your intention.

I have hundreds of success stories of athletes that just turned up and enjoyed the process of learning, pushing themselves, failing in movements and achieving new numbers that they didn’t think they could ever get to. The one thing every single successful athlete has in common is they simply turned up. I have never seen an athlete succeed by not turning up to the gym. All you need to do is walk through the door, we take care of everything else.

So have an intention in 2019 to enjoy training, enjoy the community and turn up regularly. If you don’t have a long term goal, it doesn’t matter.